Teach You To Fear

Come, my children, and listen to me,

and I will teach you to fear the LORD. Psalm 34:11

OF ALL THE THINGS we need and want to teach our children, surely the foundation for a truly successful life is this: the fear of the Lord. But what comes more naturally to us and to our children is to fear people more than we fear God and to love the praise of people more than we love to please God.

Our kids give in to peer pressure because they want to be like other kids more than they want to be like Christ. When they find it unbearable to disappoint someone, it’s because they want to please people more than they want to please Christ.

Perhaps people’s opinions have come to mean too much to our children because they haven’t been exposed enough to the greatness of God and the perfection of his character. To grow in fear of God, we must become smaller while he becomes bigger. Our kids oftentimes need our help to gain perspective on how little the opinions of other people really matter in the long run. In this way our kids can begin to care more about what God thinks and less about what other people think.

In Psalm 34, David calls his children to listen so that he might teach them to fear the Lord. Perhaps we, too, need to make a point of teaching our children to fear the Lord —not only by talking about it, but by living it out in our words and actions. Our children need to be taught that pleasing God is more important and more significant than pleasing people. They need to be taught that Christ is the only one to whom they will give account at the end of the age. Living to hear his “well done” is the most freeing and satisfying life anyone can live.

Lord, I realize it isn’t just ________ who needs to fear you more and fear people less. I do too. Apparently I haven’t outgrown my need for approval and acceptance from others. I need you to loom larger in my estimation. I need your approval and acceptance to carry a much heavier weight than it does now. So work in me, and as you do, may the change in me be evident to ________ so that ________ will also fear people less and fear you more.